#230: We Audited 100+ B2B Websites – Here's What We Learned (with Talia Wolf)

#230: Messaging | In this episode, Matt sits down with Talia Wolf, founder and CEO of GetUplift, to unpack what’s really wrong with most B2B websites – and how to fix it. After reviewing 100+ member-submitted sites from the Exit Five community, Talia shares what she sees over and over again: messaging that’s too focused on the product, poor design flow, and a lack of real customer understanding.

Matt and Talia cover:

• Why most B2B sites focus too much on features and not enough on buyer emotion
• How to use emotional targeting and customer research to write copy that converts
• The biggest design mistakes B2B marketers are making (and how to fix them)
• How to get stakeholder buy-in for website changes
• Why great websites start with strong product marketing

Timestamps

• (00:00) - – Intro to Talia
  
• (03:23) - – Why most B2B websites fail to convert
  
• (05:49) - – The common thread across 100+ website reviews from Exit Five members
  
• (08:34) - – Why focusing on features instead of emotion kills conversions
  
• (11:22) - – What is emotional targeting (and how to actually use it)?
  
• (14:37) - – The power of customer research in website optimization
  
• (17:59) - – How to apply emotional triggers to your homepage copy
  
• (21:28) - – Mistakes B2B companies make with above-the-fold content
  
• (24:30) - – Why you should write copy before designing the site
  
• (29:05) - – Structuring your site around buyer intent and behavior
  
• (32:22) - – How to get internal buy-in for messaging and UX changes
  
• (35:39) - – The difference between product marketing and “just copywriting”
  
• (38:55) - – The role of hierarchy, visual flow, and CTA placement
  
• (42:21) - – When to simplify and when to educate on B2B websites
  
• (45:43) - – Final takeaways and practical steps to start improving your site

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Dave Gerhardt [00:00:00]:
You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.

Matt Carnevale [00:00:17]:
Alrighty. Well, we're here with Talia Wolf. Talia, how's it going?

Talia Wolf [00:00:21]:
Good, good. How are you?

Matt Carnevale [00:00:24]:
I'm doing great. I'm doing great. We've done a bunch of stuff together. You've been in the Exit Five community a bunch, but now we're here face to face in person. So it's nice to finally put a face to a name. Reason I had you on the podcast today is you did a tear down in the Exit Five community. Members were submitting their websites and you were giving them a bunch of great feedback on those websites, telling them how they could improve those sites. So I want to take the time today to go through some of your learnings and hopefully we can package those up into nice action items for some of our listeners.

Matt Carnevale [00:00:58]:
But before we get into that, why don't you give us. I know you've been on the podcast before, but just a quick refresher for the people out there who may not know who you are.

Talia Wolf [00:01:05]:
Yeah, of course. I'm Talia. Hi. And I am the founder of Get Uplift, which is a conversion optimization agency. And we help B2B brands optimize their funnels and websites, really with an emotional targeting framework that I developed and I think we'll talk about it a bit today. And I also spoke about it on my previous episode with Dave, really just about understanding real intent, why B2B customers buy, and helping brands optimize with those insights.

Matt Carnevale [00:01:37]:
Cool. Love it. So before we get into maybe some of the insights, like, I feel like conversion rate optimization, we were talking about this a bit before we hit record, but I think for a lot of people conversion rate optimization is like, how do I change the form on my site? Or where should I move the button to? Or I don't know, something to do with the colors of buttons. I'm not really sure. But people have a misconception a lot of the time as to what conversion rate optimization is. So how do you define it and think about it at a high level?

Talia Wolf [00:02:09]:
So you're absolutely right. And I think what happens is you get on a hamster wheel and it's not that people want to do button testing, it's that that's what you're kind of left with when people think about conversion optimization. The go to process is, okay, I'll go into Google Analytics or, I don't know, Mixpanel or whatever tool you're using and you identify the problem and you're like, okay, it's the homepage or it's my pricing page, and now I need to optimize it. Or maybe it's a landing page. And what you do is you go through a series of steps, which is like, I'm going to do a heuristic analysis, and I'm going to Google best practices for pricing page optim optimization. And I'm gonna ask colleagues, and I'm gonna look around and see what my competitors are doing. And then I'm gonna come up with a hypothesis of what changes can I make to my pricing page that will increase conversions. And that process is what everyone uses.

Talia Wolf [00:03:05]:
And then you create a new variation, you launch a test, you analyze, and you're like, ugh, nothing happened. And maybe you've increased conversions so you'd, like, changed a call to action button, you've changed a headline. You've, you know, change the way the pricing plans are on the page. But you look at the data and you just don't understand. You don't understand why an uplift happened, and you don't really understand why a decrease or no lift happened. And that puts you on kind of a hamster wheel where you're like, okay, maybe we need some more tools. Maybe we need some more metrics. Maybe we need to follow more best practices.

Talia Wolf [00:03:41]:
And you kind of. You get into this spot where you just don't know what to change. And again, like, the biggest problem with conversion optimization is it knowing where the problem is is kind of easy if you have a data analyst, but knowing what changes to make is the biggest enigma in the black box. So my approach, when I started doing conversion optimization was doing that like, okay, let's figure this out. And I just. It just didn't work. And I finally understood that if I really want to increase conversions, what I have to do is, is understand how people buy. Because if I can understand how they buy, then I can create websites that cater to that.

Talia Wolf [00:04:18]:
And that's kind of when I went down the rabbit hole, or what I like to call my Batcave, and started just figuring out that, okay, it's all about psychology. It's all about emotion. Every single decision we make in life is based on emotion. Yes. Even in B2B, at the end of the day, people don't buy products. We're buying. You know, I want to be recognized by my manager. I want to get a.

Talia Wolf [00:04:43]:
Maybe I want to get a promotion. Maybe I'm just scared I might lose my job. There's a lot of different emotions at play, and a lot of B2B companies are ignoring that. When I finally understood that emotion is key, that's when I developed the emotional targeting framework. And that's how we approach zero at Get Uplift, which is identifying the emotions that drive decision making, identifying the real intent for people. And that's kind of how we flip the script. So instead of going into GA and then looking for best practices and then trying to come up with hypotheses, what we do is we do this customer research to understand why people buy from our clients. And then when we have those insights, we can review the website and it's so much easier to to uncover why your messaging isn't resonating, why your testimonials don't make sense, or the fact that, oh, I'm not saying what people care about or I'm missing a ton of information that people care about, and so on.

Talia Wolf [00:05:45]:
So we are just leveraging the insights that we get from our research to better understand the problems and then we can come up with new hypotheses, create new variations and test them. So it's customer first CRO. That was like a really long way of explaining it. No, I think it's important because as I mentioned to you like a moment before we jumped on when we talk about teardowns and I was saying this to my friend Shiva the other day, that I think that when people want a tear down, they're like, give me those quick wins, just tell me like what I'm doing wrong and then I can fix it. But unfortunately when I do a tear down, I think more strategically about what is wrong, what's not connecting, what's not resonating, what can you do better? So I reviewed 50 websites this time, but last year I reviewed another 50 homepages. So all in all we've done a hundred tear down slash reviews and there's so many lessons and interesting things to take away for sure.

Matt Carnevale [00:06:50]:
Okay, amazing. No, I think that's super smart way to approach it and I'm excited to get into the meat of it. And like one thought I have just before we do, like this is why whenever you're a marketer inside of a company and you're trying to make changes to the website, it's never simple and it's never just like we're going to make these changes to this webpage and we're going to get X amount from it. You start the project and then it always ladders up to like, well, what does leadership want to do? Well, what do they think we should do? And then like well, does this make sense for our customers? And then like, is sales going to be bought into this? And then it's like, but wait, we don't talk about a product this way. So how are we going to make these changes? Like, it goes so much deeper because like you're saying, like, it's a lot deeper than just what's at the surface and changing some buttons around or redesigning some stuff. But yeah, you reviewed over a hundred Exit Five members websites to date. Let's get into at least in the last 50. What are some things that you're seeing that you think B2B marketers can improve with their sites?

Talia Wolf [00:07:46]:
I'm going to say I think the biggest takeaway that I had is that, and this isn't new. So I do want to say, like, this isn't unique to Exit Five members. This is a B2B issue and challenge. Over 95% of websites that I've reviewed of those hundred websites, but also really almost every page I've seen is overly focused on their solution, their technology and pricing. So they are very highly focused with their messaging, on how great they are, on how their product works, on its cost, its technology, the features, how it works. And that is what they use to sell their product. And that is a big problem. Yeah, it's huge.

Matt Carnevale [00:08:37]:
And okay, so going into like, you know, you're viewing things from the perspective of why people buy. An emotional decision. So let's spell it out. Like, why do you think that that is an issue? You know, using that as the framing. Right. Like, people don't just, I guess, want to read a bunch of features of a product, right?

Talia Wolf [00:08:55]:
Yeah. So don't get me wrong, right? Features obviously matter. And if you are trying to choose an email marketing software or an accounting software or project management solution, you're obviously coming into this with a checklist of things that you need to have because there's a big team and you need to make sure that all this stuff exists. But in order to make an actual decision, there's a lot of different things at play. And what usually happens is businesses like brands don't really know what to say. So if you go I, if you go on B2B homepages, you're going to get one of the following headlines. You're going to have the all in one solution for X, the number one solution for Y or something, something powered by AI. Those are like, I guess the three.

Talia Wolf [00:09:50]:
The three messages and why is this a problem? This is a problem because we live in a world which I don't I feel like this is stupid to say, but you are surrounded by competitors. There are so many competitors, direct ones, indirect ones. And if you are not standing out, if you sound like everyone else, then you are not doing a good enough job in convincing people. So it's really twofold. One is by sounding like everyone else, by talking about your features and technology, you're not helping people understand why they should buy from you and you're leaving it up to them. You're giving them the heavy lifting of comparing and newsflash. They are comparing. For one of our recent clients we discovered that at any given time when someone's demoing their product, they're demoing at least three other products and these are huge solutions.

Talia Wolf [00:10:44]:
So if you're not doing that, if you're not giving them a reason and you sound like everyone else and you're copying your competitors because we all do, it's not just like shaming, then you're going to lose business. But I'm going to go even deeper and that's second thing is I need to know when I'm coming to a website that you are going to solve a problem for me. If, let's say we're choosing a project management solution because that's the easiest, I'm going to be broad now and say there are hundreds of project management solutions out there.

Matt Carnevale [00:11:14]:
Yep.

Talia Wolf [00:11:15]:
And all in all they are the same. Some have a bit better you acts, some really do have a I, some have this feature or the other but at the end of the day I could switch out the logo and you wouldn't know which is which because it doesn't matter. They mostly if they don't have one capability they will get it by the end of the year. So how do you differentiate yourself from the rest and that is by solving people's problems. And that means that you have to specifically understand who you're catering to, who you're speaking to, what their real pains are, their challenges are so that you can solve that for them on the page. One of the most brilliant moves that I loved seeing was by teamwork.com teamwork.com was a client of ours and they have a project management solution and again like they have an incredible product but in order to stand out they had to put out there that they built this product for client facing teams. Can other people use it? 100%. You could use it, I could use it.

Talia Wolf [00:12:19]:
I obviously work with clients but anyone could use their product and they would get good work out of it. But if you are client facing if you do client work, then teamwork.com is the perfect solution for you because they've built everything around that. And what that meant is that whenever we created new homepages, land pages, product pages, emails for them, everything was centered around highlighting that if you do client work, this product is for you. And we highlighted the specific pains that client facing teams have. We spoke about their needs and their desired outcomes and that's what makes the difference. So if you are just generic and you sound like everyone else, you're not only putting the work on your prospects, you're also going to lose a lot of business. So you have to step away from that generic messaging and you have to go deeper. You have to start solving people's problems and you have to be very specific about it.

Matt Carnevale [00:13:20]:
Okay, I love that. That's such a great point. Yeah, it's funny. So last year in 2024, we did a conference called Drive, which a lot of people heard about through LinkedIn. And one of the speakers at Drive was. Yeah, was Kyle Coleman, who's the CMO of Copy AI, and he showed this. It was a couple of slides and it was so powerful, it stuck with me. What he was showing was when he had first started at CopyAI, what he did was he screenshotted his homepage headline and sub headline and also his three biggest competitors and just put it up on one slide.

Matt Carnevale [00:13:53]:
And it was so clear. Like when he did that, when he first joined, it's like they all sound the exact same. And to your point, it's like you could switch out the logo and not know whose is whose product. Right? So, yeah, really, like simple exercise is like, if you're wondering, do I sound like all my competitors? Just try something like that. Like, just go look them up. I remember in my first marketing job, I didn't do that until I was like two years in, I was like, oh, wait, we sound exactly like 10 biggest competitors. What are we doing here? Right? So that's a really, really great point. And I just feel like it's not something that we pay enough attention to, but we should.

Matt Carnevale [00:14:31]:
But what do you think is like, you know, you talked about some of the ways that people can get around that, but like, what advice would you give to somebody today? Let's say they analyze some of their competitors and they find that, oh, we're, we just sound like everybody else. Like, what are the things they should go and do in the next quarter or two that may help them develop the right messaging that would fix this?

Talia Wolf [00:14:53]:
So the bad news is it's a lot of work. But the good news is no one wants to do it. So if you do it, you're going to stand out and you're going to like, win the game. The key to standing out and creating a homepage website funnel that really connects and resonates with people on an emotional level. Which means that when they land on your page, because they just googled whatever and they clicked command and they just opened a bunch of competitors of yours, when they land on your tab, they won't move to the next one because they will see themselves on the page. The key to doing that is actually doing customer research. Now, when I say customer research, I'm not saying an MPS kind of survey. I'm not asking you to email them and ask them what their favorite feature is or why they chose you.

Talia Wolf [00:15:48]:
I'm talking about real in depth research. Surveys are important, interviews are important. But let me just give you an idea. If one of the most incredible things that we're seeing is that people aren't making decisions within the company in an office, they're not making decisions in silo. They're actually on Reddit, they're on LinkedIn having conversations about your products, about your industry. And that's actually where they're making the decision because they are looking for answers to their biggest questions. One of the easiest things you can do is go into Reddit and scroll conversations and actually mine conversations that are happening right now about your industry, about your product. What you want to do is just see those organic conversations.

Talia Wolf [00:16:38]:
What are they complaining about, what are they happy about? What are products that they love and why do they love them? What are books that they're reading, what a podcast that they're listening to. All this stuff can help you better understand their pains, their challenges, their desired outcomes, how they're feeling right now before finding a solution and how they want to feel. And when you have that kind of information, we call it social listening. So you're on Reddit, you're on LinkedIn, maybe you're also doing review mining. So you're going on to G2, you're going into Capterra, you're looking at those reviews that your competitors are getting, that you are getting. And you are looking for top three pains that people mention, top three desired outcomes. When you have this kind of information, it's so much easier to review your homepage. It's so much easier to look at a landing page and say, wait, we're not addressing that pain, we're not talking about that at all.

Talia Wolf [00:17:33]:
Or oh, my gosh. Our testimonials are so generic. No one cares that someone's saying, oh, this is the best product. But maybe you go on to Reddit and you discover that the biggest pain people have is that they are concerned they won't be able to do it themselves. It's too technical. Your product looks technical to them. They're just a marketer. They don't have technical skills and they're worried.

Talia Wolf [00:17:56]:
So what you could do is you could use testimonials of marketers that were actually scared and worried about this exact same problem on the landing page and how it was sold for them and how easy it was for them, or how customer success stayed on the phone with them for two hours and solved it. So just getting into those conversations, just being that fly on the wall without even engaging can be tremendous and really helpful.

Matt Carnevale [00:18:24]:
Yep, I love that one. Yeah, that's such a good one. It's funny because, you know, obviously Exit Five has a community for B2B marketers with thousands of marketers in it. And like, I can search almost any B2B marketing product and find at least one discussion about it. So people are definitely doing it. Like, I know on LinkedIn, a lot of people talk about like, oh, no one's going to Google, they're going to communities. And like, when I wasn't working for Exit Five, I was like, do people actually do that? I think they do, but I don't really know for sure. But I could tell you from somebody who is managing a community, it absolutely happens all the time in our community.

Matt Carnevale [00:18:59]:
We see it. So people are going there. So I guess, like, I think it's smart for people to not only go to places like Reddit to also join communities where your customers might be. And I'm not saying that, like, don't join Exit five, I don't care. Like any community where that happens, like, go join it and be that fly on the wall. Because not only do you want to hear discussions about your product, you want to also hear discussions about competitors products. And you also can mine competitor reviews, right? Like at my last company, our product wasn't really as well known as our competitors, so. But our competitors are like huge companies.

Matt Carnevale [00:19:34]:
So what I did was I just went and looked at all their reviews and I found what people were complaining about, what they liked or were they complaining about. And I was just like, all right, I think I have an idea as to how we can position against them, right? Like their, their product is superior from a feature standpoint, but their customer Service sucks. So what if we just said, okay, like we're not the biggest, baddest, but we're going to stay on the phone with you for two hours if you have a problem, right? And for some people, they buy because of that. So that's something that I found really helpful as well.

Talia Wolf [00:20:02]:
I love that. And I would add, so actually I love being in Exit Five because I learn a ton. So I'm not mining it, but I do definitely like love being in those conversations. And I want to say that we actually get quite a lot of leads from all sorts of places. Like I will talk to someone and they'll go, yeah, someone recommended you on Reddit and I went into your website. So people are discovering you through these places. So I think it is really, really important to be on it. I would also say that another way I started by talking about surveys and interviews and that's another great way to uncover those emotions.

Talia Wolf [00:20:41]:
I think that normally when I talk about surveys or if I talk about interviews, people are really concerned, they don't really know what to ask and you kind of get stuck by talking about features or pricing. And one thing that I would say, if you do have the time to interview people or send out a survey, a customer survey, I think it's super important to try and figure out where people are in the decision making process. Where are they in their stage of awareness? This will also help you because what I've seen, and this is one of the other challenges that I saw that came up that was most frequent, is that a lot of the times it felt like these websites are selling so hard, but their prospects aren't ready. They don't even know what they do yet. So this is related to stages of awareness. Where are you in that buying cycle? Am I just feeling the pain, but I don't think there's a solution? Am I now trying to figure out what's better? Should I get a tool? Should I hire someone, Should I ignore it? Should I just use a spreadsheet? Or are they actively comparing different products or are they just ready to buy? You need to understand that in order to create the right content on your website. Now, a homepage is a catch all, so that's always going to be hard. But your product pages, your landing pages, the emails that you send out, those can connect with people on an emotional level if you understand where they are in the buying process.

Talia Wolf [00:22:14]:
So simple questions like what was going on in your life that made you search for a solution like oz is an incredible question. It's not why did you come to our website today? Which is like, I'm looking for email marketing. Obviously it's, hey, what happened? What was going on right now, the moment before that made you search for a solution like this? It's the little things that suddenly you get these stories like, oh, I can't bear it anymore, this is happening. That is happening. So those kind of questions framed differently are so helpful. One other question I love recommending. I learned this from Ag Consult, which is another CRO agency. Friends of mine, they ask if we took this product away, so if you could no longer use this product tomorrow, what would you miss the most? It is such a freaking brilliant question.

Talia Wolf [00:23:08]:
Because it's not, why do you like us? It's what is the one thing that you will be so sorry that you will miss if we took it away? And that's basically uncovering your value proposition. What is the one thing people appreciate most? So don't be afraid to send out surveys, don't be afraid to do interviews, because that's where you find those golden insights and that's where you can really thrive. And you can create suddenly like better copy. You can write better articles and you can create better lead magnets and so on.

Matt Carnevale [00:23:41]:
Love it, love it. Yeah, that's great advice. Yeah, it's funny, like I find that a lot of the time now. And I never used to do this because I was a bit. The companies that I used to work for were a little bit more restrictive in terms of the creativity they allowed me to have. But you know, now when I'm looking for like inspiration to write some copy, I mean, I'm not the perfect copywriter. Dave's much better than me and teaches me a bunch. But whenever I go look for inspiration, like I'm not looking at a lot of B2B brands because they seem to be stuck in that like over feature driven and like boring and similar way of talking about what they do.

Matt Carnevale [00:24:16]:
But if you look at like some of these B2C influencers who have like these like dinky products that may seem like a scam, like those are actually some of like the best sales pages that I've ever seen. Right? Because like, yeah, maybe what they're selling is a bit of a sham. Maybe they're selling you a course to fix your life. But the way that they're able to pull on those emotional strings of people to get them to buy their course, that seems like it's going to be the thing that fixes all their problems, it's brilliant. And that's kind of exactly what you're talking about, right?

Talia Wolf [00:24:48]:
I love this.

Matt Carnevale [00:24:49]:
Yeah.

Talia Wolf [00:24:50]:
Like, I'm writing a book. As you know, it's supposed to be coming in May. Fingers crossed.

Matt Carnevale [00:24:56]:
All right.

Talia Wolf [00:24:56]:
The entire book is about how B2B marketers should be leveraging B2C strategies. And I just love that you said that right now, because for some reason, we're stuck on this. I don't know who sold this to us, but we're like, no, B2B is dry. It's boring. You have to sound very businessy, whatever that means. And my biggest beef with that is that you end up selling to a building instead of the person inside because you're thinking about, oh, this is a company, they live inside a Microsoft building, and you're not thinking about the person. So B2C strategies are so smart. They're so clever.

Talia Wolf [00:25:34]:
They leverage psychology. So, okay, maybe you don't have to go to all the scamming things, but there's just so many great examples out there of incredible, incredible emotional marketing that can be leveraged in B2B. And I just. I love that you mentioned that. That's so true.

Matt Carnevale [00:25:50]:
Yeah. I'm looking forward to that book because it's something really that now I'm just kind of starting to. I mean, I've always, like, had ideas of looking into this more, but, like, now I have the freedom to do it, so it's something I'm digging in more. So looking forward to that book. But, okay, I love where this conversation is going. You started by talking about that people being overly focused on solutions and talking about their product. And we kind of went down the rabbit hole of a bunch of other things that maybe you spotted that people should do. But do you have anything else specific like that that you want to touch on that maybe you noticed as an issue in some of people's webpages?

Talia Wolf [00:26:25]:
Yeah. The other big thing, which was a problem or I guess common issue, slash mistake that I saw was overly complex layouts, distracting design elements, unclear calls to action, inconsistent visual elements, and really just poor design. And the reason I'm calling this out is it is actually part of the B2B issue. It's part of the main mistake I mentioned at the top, which is connecting with customers and making it about the customer. What happens a lot of the times. And I guess anyone listening to this, if you like listening to this, you're like, oh, no, we do this. Most companies, what they do is they create a wireframe and they put a bunch of Lorem Ipsum text in there. And then they're like, they send it to the designer.

Talia Wolf [00:27:23]:
The designer designed something and then someone has to put in copy. So design comes in before copy and design, which is a mistake, by the way. Copy should always come first. Always come first. Then create a wireframe around the copy, then do the design. I'm mentioning this because what happens is when design comes first, you're thinking about what you look like. It's the same product centricity mentality, which I mentioned, which is like you're making it about yourself. You're talking about your features and your product.

Talia Wolf [00:27:53]:
And when you do design first, you're also making it about yourself. So many companies are trying to be modern. Whatever, like quotation marks there have all these moving elements and these cool things that scroll and, I don't know, like videos in the background and autoplay. And I'm not saying these things don't work per se, because they do. Sometimes carousels can work. But generally what's happening is we think about design as how can we look great, how can we look best, how can we look like our competitor? The amount of times I've spoken to very big companies that are making so much money and they're like, our competitor looks better, we want to look like them, we want to use the same colors, we want to have the same kind of thing, they look cooler. That is a problem when you are thinking about the way you look or your design elements. In a term of like, how can I look better? You're focusing on the wrong thing.

Talia Wolf [00:28:54]:
And design has two roles, really. One is everything in your design has to amplify your message. Every single element on the page, the colors, your images, the background, every single piece of design, everything has to amplify your message. And the second role is it has to help people take the next step. Step. It's not just, oh, this is UX and this is design. No, it's all connected. People have to be able to see consistency.

Talia Wolf [00:29:25]:
Oh, red again. That's a button. When I see a red element, that's always a button. When I see this, that's always a testimonial. We have to create an experience for people so that it is easy for them to read the copy. See that this product is meant for them, built for them, solves their problem. And it's very, very clear what they have to do, what action they have to take to get the desired outcome, what they're trying to achieve. If you are overly focused on what you look like versus how can I create a design that amplifies my message and helps people take the next step.

Talia Wolf [00:30:05]:
You're making a mistake. So that is a big thing and it's all connected, obviously. But those are the two things. Like that design issue. Oh, it's so aggravating. It's so frustrating.

Matt Carnevale [00:30:17]:
Yeah, I love that one. I love that we were getting to design. So there's a woman who comes in our podcast a lot. She's been to our events, Taskbulber. You may have seen her on LinkedIn. She has a good size following. She calls herself the queen of B2B landing pages. And I did a podcast with her and she said something which may be her quote, maybe not, and maybe I'm butchering it.

Matt Carnevale [00:30:40]:
Hopefully I'm not. But it was copy is king, but design is queen. And I think that goes well with what you're saying because you're saying a couple things. The first one is that copy needs to go before design. And I mean, I've been guilty of this too. Where it's like, the initial desire to change the website comes from your desire to change the design, right? It's ugly to the eye. It's like, oh, this is ugly and outdated. Like, so we need to change this thing.

Matt Carnevale [00:31:08]:
So the first thing we focus on is we'll go look at competitors and we'll say, oh, like, their stuff is way better design. Like, so we need to have this kind of stuff in our website. And then as you're working through that part, you're like, oh, we also need to change the messaging and some words too. So like you said, you're fitting that stuff into that desire to change the design. So that's very interesting that you do it the other way around. And I think that's like a huge, huge unlock for everybody. Listening to this episode is like, copy first and then design. And I think literally, like, you can write your copy on, like, a piece of paper or Google Drive or Google Docs.

Matt Carnevale [00:31:45]:
So I love that piece. And then the second piece, which, again, I love you didn't say it exactly like this, but the way I interpret it is that design upgrades does not mean being more flashy, right? It's creating a better flow, right? It's creating a site that flows, functions better, that allows people to do the thing you want them to do. It doesn't mean more animations. It doesn't necessarily mean different colors. It doesn't necessarily mean better images to show people. Like, that stuff is all great, but it doesn't necessarily mean let's be more flashy, right?

Talia Wolf [00:32:15]:
100%. Yeah. And I like, if you're like, no, go ahead.

Matt Carnevale [00:32:21]:
No, I was going to say, like, last thing. I always like to pull examples from real life. It's like, if I don't like the way I look and, like, I want to upgrade my style, like, it doesn't mean going to now buy all designer brands or, like, wearing a big gold chain. It means, like, let's maybe get with the times a bit and create something that flows more for, like, where I'm at in my life and, like, my age or whatever it is. Right. So that's kind of like the way that I think about design, too.

Talia Wolf [00:32:44]:
That's cool. Yeah, I would say that. I'm not saying branding doesn't matter. And of course, like, okay, if your website looks like it was made in the 90s, please update it. And again, like, if it's made in the 90s, it's not serving your customers. But design should definitely come from the perspective of, okay, I want to be more modern or we're outdated, I want to look better. But the goal is to create something that is readable, that helps my customers, that generates more action. And I'll give you an example.

Talia Wolf [00:33:19]:
So tabs. Tabs are a big thing in B2B right now. They started about, I want to say, three years ago, people started. They didn't want long pages, so they started putting things in tabs.

Matt Carnevale [00:33:33]:
Wait, what are. Tell the audience what tabs are.

Talia Wolf [00:33:35]:
So tabs are. Let's say you have features and you want to put them on a product page. And instead of just having a section for each feature, you have, like, buttons that look like tabs on your browser. And you have to click on them to get the different information about each feature. So you can have them vertically and you can have them horizontal, and you'll see them on different websites. It's all the rage now. How can I make my page shorter? Oh, I will hide things in tabs, and people will have to basically engage with my page. So you have to click on things to reveal content.

Talia Wolf [00:34:21]:
Now, there are many ways to do that. You have some websites that do them with timers, and that just pisses me off. I don't curse, but it just annoys me. You're like, I'm in the middle of reading something and it just changes. And you're like, wait, how do I get back to what I was reading about this feature? And you have the ones that are flashy and they move and they jump out. And you're like, click here, click here, tap on this, tap on that. You have tabs that. Each tab has a video and a testimonial and copy and a button and you're like, what do I even look at? What do I read? So by all means, okay, tabs work.

Talia Wolf [00:35:03]:
You can use that kind of section on your website if you're really worried about long form pages, which I don't agree with. I think tabs are cool, but I prefer content that you can read as a story. But if you're creating these tabs because you think that they're modern and other companies have them, so I want to look like them, think about the user experience. What does it look like? And why should people tap on these different things and move between content pieces? So I'm not saying don't update your look and feel, I'm not saying don't use carousels, don't use tabs, but just be minded on how people are going to use this and giving them reasons to use it and making sure that every single design element on your page has an actual goal and reason to be there. There's so much fluff. There's so many brands adding just random stuff on their pages that make no sense just because it looks cool, but it actually makes sense. The page redundant and confusing and a lot of people bounce because of bad design. So design matters and it has to be mindful.

Matt Carnevale [00:36:16]:
Yeah, I love it. So I think that's a great point. And I think one thing to add to that too is like, often we will forget how we interact with sites and our state of mind when going into a buying decision. Like, even if it's something as simple as, like, you know, you're looking for, I don't know, new lawnmower as an example, it's like, well, that may be a terrible example because people don't go online to do it, but you know what I mean. It's like the way that I go onto a website and the way I browse around is like sometimes so random. It's like I'm not looking for a specific feature on like gone per se. Like maybe in some instances, yes. But, like the way I expect to get that information is not in like some massive, like 30 by 30 grid.

Matt Carnevale [00:36:56]:
So a lot of the time too, it's like, just think of, like, how you would go to a site and like how like, random you are with the way you search it and some of the things that you look for. Don't expect people to do something that you wouldn't do or where you wouldn't Think also, but cool. Okay, so we went through some great stuff. What are some other things? We talked about design, we talked about being overly solution focused. Anything else you could think of that some people were doing wrong?

Talia Wolf [00:37:18]:
These websites, I think really the biggest issue was being so product focused. And when you're product focused it kind of creates all of these problems. So you have like no customer centric messaging, you have poor UX or design, you have inconsistency in your design or you're missing the right kind of social proof. A lot of brands were using just generic social proof. So you think about, okay, must have a logo bar, must have those testimonials, but you're not strategically thinking about, okay, but what logos? Like what should I be placing there? Okay, cool. Disney uses our product. That's so cool. But is Disney or icp or is it just cool to show Disney as the logo? Like you need to think about who is coming, who is your icp, who are the people that you really want to convert.

Talia Wolf [00:38:10]:
And every single element on the page should address that. So even your testimonials, as I said, they should be solving problems, not just praising you. There was a lot of overuse of like jargon and generic copy and like obviously call it like adding AI in different places, a lot of clutter. But again, like if I were to be asked, and everything is rooted at that part where we just don't know what to say. So we put everything on there and we focus entirely on our technology and pricing and we're very, we get overly focused on that kind of stuff and that's why all of these mistakes are happening. So yeah, that's the biggest mistake. And I would say that if you want to stand out and if you want people to choose you over your competitor, the number one thing you have to do right now is start doing customer first research. It means really digging into pains and solutions and really digging into the emotions that drive people to your website.

Talia Wolf [00:39:14]:
That's the only way to stand out. It really is.

Matt Carnevale [00:39:18]:
Yeah. No, I believe that too. Like I believed for a long time that, you know, a good website starts with good product marketing. Because the product marketing is where you kind of dial in the customer research, the positioning, the messaging. Right. And if you don't have that stuff, like it requires bigger work than just an upgrade to the website. Right. So if you want to upgrade the website, but you're misaligned with your product team on how you talk about what you do, you're misaligned with leadership on like the way you Talk about what you do and what the revision is for the company.

Matt Carnevale [00:39:48]:
If you're misaligned with sales on who you target and who you're supposed to go after, like, you can't create a good website because there's just no harmony internally between you and the rest of what the business thinks is true. Right? So it's like, it's really hard to get to a place where the website makes sense and you are really dialed in on who you're speaking to and the way you speak about it if that stuff is off. So the tough part about this is that sometimes it's not as easy as you just going and doing the work. You have to actually go and, like, uncover these business problems to help you get to a better end. Outcome, right? It's like, even the issue with marketing in general, it's not always about, how do I improve the way our LinkedIn ads are performing. It's like, well, how do I improve the way we even talk about what we do in general? And that's usually not just like the marketing team getting in a zoom call and talking about it for an hour. It's like, well, we need to get some of this information from the product team, from sales, from leadership. We need to get everyone together and come to agreements on this stuff, right? So a lot of the time, too, the changes and the reason why it's not working are bigger than just you as the marketer.

Matt Carnevale [00:40:58]:
And it requires you to go outside of a bubble and speak to those people and get the right information, right?

Talia Wolf [00:41:02]:
100%. And I will add to that. I think when you do this kind of research, when you do emotional targeting research, one of the most incredible things. So as a CRO agency, we go out and we're like, okay, let's get some case studies and we interview our. Our clients. And we're like, okay, let's show those numbers. Like, we've increased conversions. And without really a shadow of a doubt, every single time we'll get those numbers, like, okay, they increase our conversions.

Talia Wolf [00:41:30]:
But the number one feedback we get every single time is the best thing, is that we got everyone on the same page. And that is the key with this kind of research, is that you suddenly have a common language about who you're speaking to, what you're selling to them, why they're buying it, and how you should be speaking to them. And that not only aligns everyone in marketing, and suddenly the person that's doing the LinkedIn ads, the person that's doing email, the person that's creating that webinar are all speaking the same language. You're also able to take this research and say, hey, you guys over there in sales, here's what we've found out. The biggest pains that are leading people to our website are this. These are the desired outcomes. You should be using this language. So suddenly you've got product, sales, customer success and marketing all agreeing who you're speaking to and how to talk to them.

Talia Wolf [00:42:26]:
And it breaks down those silos. And it's just incredible because it's just research, but it's such valuable research. And when you've got the data in front of you saying, look, this is what they're saying, all we have to all do together is align around it. It just gets the ship kind of going in the right direction. And I couldn't agree more. It's just getting all the right people in the room and showing them this research. It's so much easier to get buy in for your ideas and campaigns and just everything going forward.

Matt Carnevale [00:42:56]:
Yeah, no, I love it. And it creates this harmonious approach of like what the person experiences with your brand. So it's like if the sales team talks about you one way and The Leader on LinkedIn talks about you another way and then the marketing team talks about another way, the website is different. It's like, well, the person's just going to be confused and they're going to be like, well, this is kind of confusing. I'm just going to go with this competitor who just makes more sense in my head. Right. So it creates a harmonious approach. And last thing I want to touch on before we wrap here is stakeholder alignment.

Matt Carnevale [00:43:26]:
So we just talked about how important it is. Like how have you seen what do you think the process is for an in house marketer to go to leadership and say, I want to make some upgrades to our site because I have a belief that we can improve it by X, Y and Z and generate more pipeline. What should they do? Like who should they be talking to? What kind of meetings are they setting? What does that look like?

Talia Wolf [00:43:47]:
Yeah, it's a great question. So I think the good news about conversion optimization is that everyone wants to do it because you're like, of course I want to increase my conversion. So I think one of the best ways that we found is really just saying, hey, we want to optimize, we want to generate more conversions to do that something that the way we're doing it right now isn't working or it's not good enough or it's not where we want it to be. We have a process that we want to try and that means being more customer centric. So what I usually do and what I recommend is don't pitch the whole thing. Like I'm going to do a whole like messaging project. That's not, it's not the way, it's more, hey, we'd like to do some research, we'd like to do some interviews, we'd like to run some surveys or we're going to do some social listening and we're going to come back with some insights that we've learned about our customers and then I'm going to leverage those insights to optimize the website. And one of the best things about this is that, okay, you might need approval to do interviews or approval to send out a survey, but you do not need approval to do social mining or review mining.

Talia Wolf [00:44:59]:
You can go and listen to conversations and come back and say, here's what I've learned. I downloaded all these reviews From Capterra and G2, I saw all these conversations happening on Reddit and actually I went on Amazon and I found a book that is trying to solve what our product does. It's about accounting. And I downloaded all those reviews and I fed all of this information into ChatGPT and what I found is that these are the top three panes that people are mentioning. I'm going to run an AB test on our product page or on a landing page and I'm going to check for this. And if you do that, then you are coming with the data and you're not just saying I want to optimize and I want to change things. You're saying, here's what I've uncovered, here's my hypothesis, here's what I'm going to test it and here's how I'm going to measure it. If we get more free trials, then we know we're in the right direction.

Talia Wolf [00:45:55]:
I'm going to test it on email or I'm going to test it in my ads, or I'm going to test it on the landing page and I'll come back to you with all results. You don't have to pitch the whole thing, you just have to pitch that one test and it's the best way to get your foot in the door.

Matt Carnevale [00:46:10]:
And I love that so much. It's, I love that a you're leading with the data. I mean it's always, it's non refutable, right? No one can argue it. And then the other thing is like clearly laying out exactly what you're going to do, it's like you're not leaving it uncovered. Like, I'm going to optimize our site and make some changes. Right? Because then people are like, wait, what does that mean? How much work is that? Is that going to be positive, negative? What do we expect from it? In this case, it's like, I'm going to gather the data, I'm going to get the insights, and everyone, everyone in the company wants customer insights. There's nobody in a B2B company that doesn't want more of them. So you're going to get all that and then you're going to use that as the fuel to a B test.

Matt Carnevale [00:46:46]:
Not even change a B test, this one thing. And if there's a material increase, then it's like, okay, we're going to make this change permanently and maybe we're going to use that to change some more things on the side. Right? So I love that approach. I think that's so smart.

Talia Wolf [00:46:59]:
Yeah, that's exactly it. And that's the best thing, is that every test, whether you increase conversions or not, is a success. Because if it doesn't work, then you can say, okay, this type of messaging doesn't work now I'm going to try something else. But you have research to go on and it's not like, change the button didn't work. Don't know what to do now. Yeah, let's add a pop up.

Matt Carnevale [00:47:20]:
I love it. I love it. Tell you, this has been so, so great. I feel like not only have I learned a bunch, I'm sure everybody listening to this is going to learn so much. Thanks for, you know, always being in the community, being a great member, giving back, you know, giving people a bunch of great feedback on their websites. It helps a bunch of us do better work and grow our careers, which is the goal. So thank you. And I'm looking forward to your book coming out in May.

Matt Carnevale [00:47:45]:
Right?

Talia Wolf [00:47:45]:
Yep.

Matt Carnevale [00:47:46]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Talia Wolf [00:47:47]:
That's my goal.

Matt Carnevale [00:47:48]:
That's it. Okay. Maybe it'll be later, but hey, maybe when it comes out, we'll do another episode and do a chat about it as well.

Talia Wolf [00:47:54]:
Amazing. Thank you so much for having me. I love Exit Five.

Matt Carnevale [00:47:57]:
Of course.

Talia Wolf [00:47:58]:
Awesome.

Matt Carnevale [00:47:58]:
Thanks, Tony.

Dave Gerhardt [00:48:02]:
Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode. You know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at Exit Five and you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, exitfive.com our mission at Exit Five is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at Exit Five. There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community.

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People are in there posting every day asking questions about things like marketing, planning ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers. Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days so you can go and check it out risk free and then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more exitfive.com and I will see you over there in the community.

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